Review: THE MASSIVE-VERSE FIGHTING CARD GAME STARTER PACK is a Perfect Introduction

I’ve made it no secret that I freaking love the Massive-Verse. For those who are unfamiliar with the Massive-Verse, it’s a shared universe of media (all starting with comics published by Image) with awesome characters like Radiant Black, Rogue Sun, Inferno Girl Red, and more.

I love the comics and when I heard they were coming out with a card game, boy did I get giddy. At the beginning of August, the team at Solis Game Studio officially released a Starter Pack for the Massive-Verse Fighting Card Game designed by Brian McKay (powered by the Pocket Paragons System) at Gen Con and now you can pick it up yourself for a mere $5 (display boxes are set to release in October)! Solis was kind enough to send me a Starter Pack to review, so continue on for my thoughts.

The Starter Pack for the Massive-Verse FCG comes with the bare minimum to try the game out: two complete decks, one each for Radiant Black: Challenging Catalyst and Premier: Catalyst Arbiter (9 cards each); some health tokens; and some energy tokens. It’s not a lot that you need.

The gameplay is extremely simple, too which makes for really quick games. I love this. The super barebones explanation is that you and your opponent select a card from your hand to play and then flip them up at the same time and resolve them with some cards dealing damage, some blocking specific types of cards, and some straight up executing your opponent.

I promise there’s more nuance to it than that, but you can read the full rules and even watch a demo of Massive-Verse co-creators Kyle Higgins (Radiant Black) and Ryan Parrott (Rogue Sun) duke it out on the official website.

Based on my experience with the Starter Pack, I really love the Massive-Verse FCG. While at first you might think that the decks are the same with only small adjustments for art and names, I assure you that the similarities really end with each deck having one card for each symbol.

Each character has a blurb that explains their playstyle and my wife and I found those to be fairly accurate. Premier is a heavy hitter that’s all about being offensive and just crushing their foe while Radiant Black is more of a control strategy designed for a grind game.

Also, while the cards share symbols, different characters deal different amounts of damage with each symbol. For example, Radiant Black’s Pressure (Orange) deals a measly 1 point of damage and forces your opponent to discard a card if it connects, Premier’s Denied (Orange) does a whopping 3 points of damage and it blocks a point of damage. You’ll have to experiment to figure out which character best suits your playstyle.

Another fantastic aspect to the Massive-Verse FCG is the art. The art for the pack that the Starter Pack comes in and the character cards are new from Marcelo Costa, but the art on all of the cards comes from the comics. This is a fan’s greatest dream!

I genuinely have nothing bad to say about this game. If you like the Massive-Verse comics and/or you’re looking for a lightweight, quick-playing card game, I highly recommend picking up the Massive-Verse FCG.

If you’re hesitant to get the big box of eight characters (MSRP $25), the Starter Pack is absolutely perfect! It only costs $5 and you and a friend can give it a try. That’s the same price as most booster packs for trading card games with infinitely more value since you can immediately play a game.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go save up the $85 for the Massive-Verse Card Game Bundle on Solis’ website (comes with the base game, expansion, playmat, promo pack, and holographic pack)! I’m all in, buddy!